With birthdays comes cake, presents - if you have a party and having a gift registry that you sent around - I discovered this through experience. Seems at my age you don't get presents and it's not the norm, unless it's from family (le beau). My birthday is during the busiest time of the year (for others) and so everything's booked out - unless you plan a year before. When we get married I'm changing my birthday to Halloween. What's worse, having a Christmas birthday or New Years?Other than cake (which I have yet to order :P) no matter what age you are 18+ you'll always get freebies for your birthday! Discounts, and free food mainly. I have yet to come across free activities like bowling, a movie ticket or anything like that. Here's the freebies/discounts I claimed this year.

I do wish there was a florist that gives you a rose, but this is 1/22 from my beau.

text These were the offers I didn't get to (above) because just because you got a discount doesn't always mean you save, sometimes it's more of an incentive to purchase something you didn't need/want that much. As the case with SABA ($25) with a $25 min. spend and they don't have anything cheap, same with David Lawrence. Jeanswest said their $10 discount was only valid for full-priced items, and at the time they had 50% off store wide so that didn't work out. By the time the sale ends so will the voucher expire.Review, you need to sign up the month before your birthday - but their loyalty program didn't start till December, so I missed it - and it wasn't my fault. They'll give you a $20 voucher, need to sign-up instores.Cold Rock - They open 6pm-11pm, so that didn't happen. We're not traveling 30mins for free ice cream. If only they opened earlier we could drop by after Chadstone.Ali Baba - Free wrap, they sent this voucher after I had already left to go shopping so I didn't see it till later, and as above we're not traveling 30mins for freebies.

And these three are the ones that didn't have clear details on their birthday offers, and 2/3 suck at communication and never replied to my messages, hence I don't recommend bothering to sign-up for their offers and spam.

So how do you to get these freebies?By signing up to their newsletters and enduring all the spam throughout a year, jokes, you make your spam account to have all these subscriptions sent to :P And a month before your birthday double check you've signed-up for everything. Also Nandos is a special one here, within 6mths prior to your birthday you need to make a purchase.Any tips?Sign up two months before, and don't unsubscribe. Have a business card holder book to house all these loyalty program cards. Most of them need to scan that card, but so need the b'day email too. Also have photo ID, though only Nandos checks. It's also important to note when your offer is valid, some are only on the day, others include the day before and after, and a couple run during the week of your birthday.